A compelling reason for Putin not to invade Ukraine
Both inside and outside Russia, a concern for saving innocent civilians may put a damper on the Kremlin’s aggression.
A woman walks by a building destroyed during fighting between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
AP
Foreign leaders are giving Vladimir Putin any number of reasons for Russia not to take Ukraine by force or other means. Yet the best advice may be coming from within Russia itself. In recent days, statements from two disparate groups, prominent liberal thinkers and former military officers, have described Kremlin provocations and threats against Ukraine as “criminal.”
Russia will become a “pariah of the world community” if it invades its close neighbor, wrote retired Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, a former chief of military cooperation, on behalf of the All-Russian Officers Assembly. Meanwhile, more than 5,000 members of the Congress of Russian Intellectuals asked the Putin regime to avoid an “immoral, irresponsible, and criminal” war.
These warnings of a moral crisis for Russia were echoed in the United States this week when officials estimated an invasion could result in 25,000 to 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine. That possible violation of humanitarian law – part of the rules of war embedded in the 1949 Geneva Conventions – may give pause to Mr. Putin’s calculations of war. Ukraine has already begun to document cases of war crimes by pro-Russian combatants in the eastern region.
On top of any killing of noncombatants in Ukraine, Amnesty International warns of a mass migration to the West. “It is frightening to imagine what scale the refugee crisis could reach in the event of escalating hostilities in Ukraine. It will be a continent-wide humanitarian disaster with millions of refugees seeking protection in neighboring European countries,” said Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary-general.
Russia has often backed protections for vulnerable civilians in conflict zones. In Syria’s war, it has backed a “humanitarian pause” to let trapped civilians escape the fighting. In 2017, it accused Ukraine’s government of killing Russian speakers in the eastern region.
Yet in 2019, Moscow walked away from a vital part of the Geneva Conventions that authorizes investigations into alleged war crimes against civilians. And it has ended its support of a 2005 United Nations doctrine known as Responsibility to Protect. That doctrine allows international intervention in countries that fail to protect mass killings of civilians.
Still, Russia’s behavior hints Mr. Putin may be all too aware of the reputational costs of violating moral guardrails that prevent civilian harm. His taking of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, for example, was done by stealth incursion of Russian troops out of military uniform, or what NATO calls “unattributed warfare.” And U.S. officials speculate that Russia might use cyberattacks against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure or limit an invasion to the Russian-speaking territories
The idea that warring parties must recognize the innocence of civilians has taken hold in most countries over decades. It provides an essential legal bumper to prevent wars with no limits. It also promotes the universal principle of reverence for life. From both inside and outside Russia, that message may yet persuade Mr. Putin to hold his fire.